A Broken Engagement
by Kapellmeister
Summary: Will ponders his relationship with Elizabeth. Set between the second and third movie.


Summary: According to wikipedia, Will breaks off his engagement with Elizabeth some time between the second and third movie. This short one-shot pictures how I imagine this scene to have played out based on the couple's behavior in At World's End.

A Broken Engagement

Will Turner twirled his father's dagger between his grubby fingers. The blade had seen better days, the metal blackened with age and brine. He had scrapped living barnacles from hilt of the dagger and the wood was as light as bleached driftwood in his heavy, able hands. He traced the tip of his finger across the edge of the blade. It was fairly dull, a sad state for any blade to be in, and jagged to the touch.

Continuing to finger the ancient metal, Will glanced towards the bow of Barbossa's latest ship, hastily commandeered in their effort to make swift passage to Singapore. There, leaning against the rail of the tiny vessel, stood Elizabeth Swann. Her hair was loose, billowing in the crisp sea breeze about her diminutive shoulders. Her hair was fair and her skin darkened from exposure to the harsh southern sun. Dressed scandalously in men's garb, she was never-the-less stunning, a beautiful goddess of the sea. The wild air she had possessed as a girl had matured into something much more powerful and demanding in womanhood. The aura Elizabeth exuded was one of untamable strength and will. This woman was suited for the sea, not for petticoats and tea parties, and Will loved his goddess passionately.

The problem was Will knew that Elizabeth obviously did not share his fervor.

Stabbing his blade violently into the deck, Will wrestled with his rage. He glanced once again towards Elizabeth. She stared despondently into the water, guilt and grief evident in her deep brown eyes. As she squinted into the water, Will watched as her face was suddenly transformed, shaken by some profound sorrow. He watched as tears began to trail down her lovely, brown face until her entire countenance was slick with salty moisture. He would have gone to her had she not mouthed the words he'd been dreading to hear.

"Oh, Jack…."

His eyes glittering with annoyance, Will yanked the blade from the wood planking of the deck. It came free with a shuddering yank. The dagger had made a satisfying notch in the ship's surface, he saw. Standing up, he began to pace the cramped stern, ever spinning his father's keepsake.

She loved _him,_ Captain Jack Sparrow. There was no denying the signs. When he was imprisoned on Davy Jones's accursed ship, girl and pirate had undoubtedly spent much time together. Something had flourished between them, made evident by the passionate kiss Sparrow and Elizabeth shared before Jack had sacrificed himself to save the others from the kraken.

He remembered watching with stone cold dread and disbelief as Elizabeth leaned hungrily into their kiss, pushing Jack up against the mast in her eagerness. Jack had kissed back, a self satisfied smirk playing across his bronzed features. Will had looked away swiftly, confused and humiliated. Will and Elizabeth had kissed a few times before when the couple had managed to escape their chaperones in the time before their thwarted wedding. Their kisses had been every bit as passionate as the one he had witnessed between his fiancé and the pirate captain. But Elizabeth was kissing another man. Surely that wasn't right.

Even if he wanted to deny that kiss, the sorrow Elizabeth had exhibited after Jack's death tied the knot. She was a mess, weeping softly and staring blankly at nothing. Distant and unusually quiet, Elizabeth hadn't spoken a word to him since they departed Tia Dalma's hut. She hadn't spoken much to anybody.

Later on, he had cursed his stupidity. Elizabeth was an untamable being, hating cages. A marriage to Will would be like a cage to Elizabeth, binding her to the proper life of fine society that she had come to dread during her time at sea. She longed for freedom and Jack provided that for her. How Will had ever imagined that he could hold her love he could not fathom. Even when they were children Elizabeth had been a capricious little thing. He had wondered at times if their friendship was merely a thing of novelty to her. What an adventure it would have been for her to escape the Governor's Manor and cavort with a lowly blacksmith's apprentice. He sneered internally. Being engaged to a blacksmith obviously paled in comparison to being a lover to a pirate captain.

Silently brooding, Will once again glanced towards the bow of the ship. Elizabeth had disappeared below deck, leaving an empty void in the space she had once occupied. Tucking his father's dagger in his belt, he brushed one hand through his dark brown curls. He knew what he was about to do and it pained him. But it was necessary. If she loved Sparrow then he wouldn't hold her back. He loved her enough to let her go.

He moved quickly and decisively, before he could lose heart and change his mind. Soon he too was below deck. Waiting a second for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, Will descended into the cramped quarters. On the far end Elizabeth sat in her hammock, swinging forlornly, lost in her thoughts. Her lank curls had fallen into her still moist face, masking her expression. Her hands fidgeted with the hem of her stolen sailor's shirt, aged a creamy white. On the ring finger of her left hand their engagement band sparkled. He had fashioned it himself with a little help from a jeweler he knew in Port Royal.

Stopping, unsure of what to say in the face of that engagement ring, he merely whispered her name.

"Elizabeth."

Her head snapped up at the sound of her name on his lips. She winced at his expression but didn't turn away. He didn't understand the look that then played across her face, a mixture of love, defiance and fear. Standing up as though to meet his unvoiced challenge she responded, "Yes, Will?"

Her brown eyes burned a hole right through him. He could not look into those eyes without doubting everything that he was about to do. Instead he looked at his hands, large and rough. They had once been blacksmith's hands. Now they were the hands of a sailor, of a pirate. His eyes made his way to his engagement band. It, too, was grimy with brine and dirt. The tiny gem resting within the metal had faded to a lackluster glint.

Slowly, as if in a daze, he reached out and plucked the engagement ring off his finger, twisting it free from his thick digit. Elizabeth's gasp sounded soft and distant in comparison to the blood pounding within his ears. There, he had done it. He looked up to meet Elizabeth's gaze. The pain and disbelief that burned there almost made him slip the ring back on his finger, but what was done was done. It was for the better, he told himself for seemingly the thousandth time. She loved Jack, he reminded himself. He was only holding her back from what she truly wanted.

She wanted Jack.

She wanted freedom.

He looked back down, this time at his father's dagger. He owed his father.

Elizabeth's voice broke the silence, strangled yet firm.

"Why?"

As if she didn't already know. As if she didn't know how much she had hurt him.

His response was cool and indifferent, something Norrington or her father would have stated, filled with condemnation "I'm shocked by your impropriety of late. I can't trust you, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth's silence changed from one of shock to anger. She wrenched off her own engagement ring in earnest, flinging it to the ground. It rolled and slipped into a crack between two planks, lost into a black abyss. Will flinched and then continued.

"I'm jumping ship the next time we make port to pick up supplies. I'm… I'm going to try to help my father. He needs me more than you. I will find a way to free him." He fingered the blade of his dagger.

"So it's over then, just like that?" Elizabeth's voice cut the stale air angrily. "After everything that we've been through together…."

Still not meeting her eyes, he nodded. "Yes, just like that." Running his hand once more through his hair he turned and departed quickly, tripping once over somebody's hammock in his alacrity. He mustn't let her see the icy tears that had begun to form in the corner of his eyes. He mustn't let her see how much this hurt, how much he still loved her. He felt his way blindly towards the ladder, pondering the consequences of his actions.

Just as he was making the journey up to the deck he heard a strangled sob come from deep within the darkness.

"Will. Oh, Will…."


End file.
